1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic motion-controlled photographing apparatus and related photographing method suitable for photographing interiors of underground structures such as a manhole, and a hand hole.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, due to the presence of various cables located in and extending through interiors of underground structures such as a manhole and a hand hole, there is a need for managing installed statuses of the cables accommodated in the underground structure and managing facilities installed in a body of the underground structure.
It has been a usual practice for a person to directly enter the underground structure such as the manhole or the hand hole and make sketches of the same, with the sketches describing the positions of the cables to prepare maintenance and facility management data.
Maintenance and management data are prepared for the purpose of confirming the current cable statuses, or conducting study for a capability of a subsequent cable to be accommodated and conducting study for inspection and repair of the underground structure.
When preparing maintenance and management data using photographs, the interior of the underground, such as the manhole, must be photographed at an angle of 360 degrees. In this case, an attempt has been made to provide a means, disclosed in a related material 1 (Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. H6-167760), which allows a scenery, that is not the underground structure, to be photographed at the angle of 360 degrees in place of a technology for the person to take a camera to photograph the interior of the underground at the angle of 360 degrees.
The related material 1 is directed to a private camera with a structure in which a camera rotation control mechanism 52, as shown in FIG. 1 of the related material 1, and a controller 61, as shown in FIG. 2 of the related material 1, are preliminarily assembled.
A related material 2 is directed to a special camera in which a camera 1 and a tripod 2 are unitarily formed in a manner as shown in FIGS. 1 and 3 of the related material 2.
However, when making the sketches by hands during preparation of maintenance and management data, the presence of work that needs a considerable length of time and is labor intensive and the occurrence of factors overlooked by the worker result in a discrepancy between actual conditions in the field and data that are prepared to cause an inaccuracy in maintenance and management data to be prepared, thereby exhibiting an issue in which the field occasionally needs to be inspected again.
On the other hand, when preparing maintenance and management data, since the photographs show images indicative of partial areas, respectively, of the interior of the underground structure one by one, there is a need for taking a stitch editing work to allow the respective photographs to be joined in order to obtain an entire image.
Related art technologies, needed for the person to enter the underground structure while carrying the camera to photograph the interior at the angle of 360 degrees, require the persons to be skilled in obtaining a series of accurate photograph images without omission.
While photographing at the angle of 360 degrees can be performed by utilizing the related materials 1 or 2 set forth above, since the related art structure employs the private camera or the specific camera, disclosed in the Related materials set forth above, that incorporate all the mechanisms inside the camera bodies, resulting in complicated structures. Also, another issue resides in an inability of using a commercially available camera. Moreover, the related art structure is hard to be used in a narrow space such as the hand hole where the worker cannot directly enter and, even when the worker is able to directly enter the underground structure, there is a need for preliminarily conducting working steps for safety such as ventilating works.
To address such an issue, the present invention has an object to provide an automatic motion-controlled photographing apparatus and related photographing method wherein, not only in an area where a person can enter but also even in an area inside an underground structure in a narrow space or in an area with an oxygen deficiency, enables a commercially available camera to be used to provide photographs accurately grasping interior statuses based on which maintenance and facility management data can be prepared.
To achieve the above object, the present invention provides an automatic motion-controlled photographing apparatus, comprising: a vertically extending and retracting tripod having a mount section; a controller fixedly supported on the mount section; a turntable rotatably supported on an upper surface of a box of the controller; and a camera detachably supported on an upper surface of the turntable; wherein the controller includes a turntable drive circuit operative to rotate at least the turntable at a given rotational angle that is determined at an arbitrary angle, and a shutter drive circuit operative to turn on a shutter of the camera supported on the turntable via a non-contact signal relay at a time instant when rotation of the turntable at the given angle has been terminated.